Despite a deadly year, overall crime drops in Allentown; other Valley commuities see decrease in 2017

Allentown investigators at a crime scene at Fourth and Washington streets in 2017. (FILE PHOTO / THE MORNING CALL)

For a three-month stretch late last year, Allentown and Lehigh County detectives were running from crime scene to crime scene as the city’s deadliest year in a decade unfolded.

A surge of homicides from mid-August to mid-November included two men who killed each other in a gang-related shooting in broad daylight; a man gunned down in a road-rage incident in south Allentown; and a teen shot by a friend after an argument in a parking lot across from City Hall.

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But even as the number of homicides in Allentown increased to its highest level since 2008, the city last year mirrored the national trend of a slight decline in serious crime, according to statistics on the state police’s uniform crime reporting system.

In Allentown, crimes like armed robberies dropped 5 percent and nonfatal gun assaults went down 32 percent, contributing to the overall 0.9 percent drop in Part I crimes, categorized as homicide, aggravated assault, rape, robbery, burglary, theft and arson, the state statistics show.

While the overall numbers dropped, two of the most serious crimes went up in Allentown — homicides rose from 10 in 2016 to 17 in 2017, a 70 percent increase, while rape and rape attempts went up 25 percent, according to the annual report released last month.

The overall decrease in serious crime was seen in other Lehigh Valley municipalities as well.

Bethlehem’s 32 percent decrease in strong-arm robberies and 12 percent decrease in burglaries and burglary attempts led to a nearly 5 percent dip overall in Part I offenses. A decrease in thefts, a trend throughout the country, contributed to decreases in serious crime in Whitehall, South Whitehall and Bethlehem townships.

Palmer Township had one its more deadly stretches with three homicides from November 2016 to March 2017, but crime statistics show that it was a jump in theft reports — from 218 in 2016 to 313 last year — that contributed to the township’s having the Lehigh Valley’s highest increase in serious crime, with a 26 percent rise. Easton and Upper Macungie Township also recorded increases in serious crime.

Preliminary numbers suggest that, yes, in many of our large cities, there was a slight decrease in most major crimes, apart from homicide.

Of all Lehigh Valley municipalities, Allentown’s 2017 crime totals are similar to what experts have seen in other big cities in the country, according to Michelle Bolger, an assistant professor of criminal justice at DeSales University.

“Preliminary numbers suggest that, yes, in many of our large cities, there was a slight decrease in most major crimes, apart from homicide,” she said.

While the increase in Allentown homicides was troubling, police Chief Glen Dorney said, all but two have been cleared and investigators have leads on the two that remain unsolved. Two of the 17 homicides were ruled justified, one of them when Allentown police shot and killed a robbery suspect they said rammed their cruisers and pulled a gun on officers.

Police arrest man at Fifth and Turner streets in Allentown and probe his connection to a fatal shooting earlier in the day.

Dorney said the increase in some violent crimes can be partly attributed to an increase in gang activity — four of the homicide victims had some ties to gangs, investigators have said. Some city crime, he added, has a connection to the growing heroin epidemic, including some property crimes and sexual assaults.

In hopes of combating street crime and reluctant witnesses, Dorney said the department is continuing efforts to reach out to some of the city’s troubled neighborhoods. Last year, the city launched an app that alerts residents to unsolved crime and allows them to provide anonymous tips. Dorney said he is hoping to launch initiatives this year that would connect officers to the communities they patrol and persuade residents to talk to police when crime happens in their neighborhoods.

Dorney said that while the number of gunshot homicides and nonfatal shooting victims increased last year, the number of gunshot calls dropped significantly, from 506 in 2016 to 407 in 2017.

“Either [gunshots] are happening and people are not calling them in, or they are not happening,” Dorney said, adding that many gunshot calls are reported by patrol officers hearing them or dispatchers seeing them on city cameras.

To help strengthen community relationships, Dorney said he would like to use recently awarded grant money to establish a community crime suppression unit, where a team of six officers — a sergeant and five patrol officers — would be assigned to a troubled neighborhood and remain there as long as needed.

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In the past, because of staffing issues, the department would place community officers in certain neighborhoods, but only temporarily, Dorney said.

“It’s like we took a Band-Aid and moved it from one wound to to another,” he said.

Dorney said the crime suppression unit would stay in the neighborhood until the officers get to the root of the problem, whether it’s a beef between neighbors, or rising gang or drug tensions.

Allentown’s 0.9 percent drop in serious crime in 2017 comes a year after the city had one of its only increases in more than a decade. In 2016, Allentown recorded a 4.4 increase in serious crime compared with 2015.

The city had been steadily improving its crime statistics since 2006, a year after a third of the department took early retirements. That year, Allentown had one of its most violent years ever with a record number of robberies, shootings and assaults. Serious crime since then has been nearly slashed in half: Last year’s crime numbers are 46 percent less than in 2006.

However, Bolger added, rape and sexual assault are consistently underreported crimes, making it hard to know how much is missed and if there really are increases or decreases in the actual crime itself.

Beyond its own illegality, heroin might affect other crime statistics, Bolger said, including some of the more violent crimes, prostitution and sex trafficking and even some isolated property crimes. However, she said, the effects are localized and hard to understand.

“While heroin has certainly contributed to an increase in overdose and tragic deaths … we definitely cannot say that heroin has led to major epidemic or increase in crime,” she said. “However, it certainly has impacted individual lives and communities negatively.”